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On Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:23:27 -0400, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote: > If you want DSL, the physical cable belongs to Verizon in our area. And the Central Offices, too. [Verizon tale] A few years ago, after I got over my utter astonishment from learning that DSL was technically workable (I'm a retired electronic tech), I considered getting it; Telocity looked nice, and then DirecTV bought it. I signed up with D.TV, and theirs was a class act; the bridge was made in USA! Well, D.TV decided to quit ADSL (perhaps not enough profit?), and I became a "Direct Switch" customer. Did research at Broadbandreports.com (iirc); (was DSLReports.com, iirc), and chose Speakeasy. {From not-quite reliable recollection: } Late in the process of provisioning, I got a sales pitch from Verizon, and back then, I had no particular good news about V., but V. had offered ADSL a few years ago, in the Greater Boston Area (no doubt, selected communities), and got an unexpectedly "good" response; they had far more interest than they could handle. Matters became so bad that they lost a class-action lawsuit. Nobody at Verizon will be honest about that; some Verizon cust. svce. people are probably honest when they say they never heard of it. DirecTV had had a bad time with third-party tech support, and was very open and honest about it. Believe me, such candor makes me really want to sign up with an outfit, if the rest seems reasonable! So true, when <politics> lying is exalted as a political tool </politics>. OK: Back to the sales pitch (and better memory): Mentioned the c.a. lawsuit, and got the usual quasi-denial or such. Said I had selected my provider carefully, and was pretty far along in the process. Saleman tried hard to make me change to Verizon. His last words carried such a clear implication by tone of voice, etc. (one could never prove it legally) but the gist was utterly obvious: "{You'll be sorry!}" Covad was in the loop, handling the provisioning, but I *think* the actual physical wire change at the C.O. was done by Verizon techs., for Covad. (Daily, I'd pick up the handset and dial 1 to break dial tone, expecting random noise, but -- silence. I didn't know that before the first synch. attempt, the DSL card at the C.O. doesn't send you any DSL signal at all. Not important, though.) When I came to my senses, and tried to synch., both ends saw each other, but no success. Repeated -- daily. Finally, called Speakeasy (again), and a new fellow took over my account. I'm solidly convinced that he had a personal interest in seeing me become up and running. What he said, and to whom, I have no idea, but after many hours, I had successful synch. attempt. Joy! Speakeasy had logged every synch. attempt; interesting. Apparently rare, but I was given the voice number to reach Covad, just in case. Customer normally never speaks to Covad. (I had mis-typed "Cisco" for "Covad"; hope I fixed all. Opera's e-mail composer is weird -- Very nice for Unicode, but not even a basic text editor...) As well, Speakeasy had provided a stage-by-stage Web-page update on my provisioning. They also gave me a temp. dialup number that didn't work worth a darn; I still had my shell acc't. at TheWorld. Can't prove anything, but I *suspect* that Verizon techs had intentionally mis-connected my line to the DSL cage (or terminal block?). They might have left tip open, or ring open, or (less likely!) shunted tip and ring with a capacitor. Since then, Speakeasy has been almost as reliable* as the local electric utility. They are quite geek-friendly; not the cheapest, but my point of view is that they will have enough income to be around in 5 years. They were one of the first to offer (apparently superior QoS) VoIP, and very early offered "geographical" 911 service. Whether Verizon is running DSL service as a loss leader, I don't know. (QoS: quality of service) *E-mail notices of very infrequent network maint/upgrades; re-synch. needed maybe twice a year, on average, if that. (I keep my bridge up 24/7.) I have always asked who provides DSL when I learn of someone else in this area who has it. Verizon seems to be about the only one. These people also report good service. They probably all have DHCP; mine is fixed. A while ago, my loop to the CO (phone line) became intermittently quite noisy; had "frying", snap, crackle, and pop. Might have been useful to record for a sound effects library. DSL died. Verizon did 2 or 3 "truck rolls", and wasn't having much luck. (They did respond to the trouble call in good time.) Rather than locate the problem, which would have been time-consuming and costly, they cut in a new pair, and Happiness Returned. Been fine, ever since. Btw, Verizon's Fios seems quite interesting. Almost fiber-to-the-curb. As I understand it, between your residence (and small business, I guess) there's still a copper-wire pair, but it's so short that max. data rates are more like what a friend says is typical in Sweden (30 Mb/s). -- Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass. (Not "MA") The curious hermit -- autodidact and polymath Hurricanes are a bad way to learn the first letters of the Greek alphabet. Happiness is a full Quabbin.
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